Benjamin Flower, Newgate, to Eliza Gould, Mr. Priam’s, Wellington, Somersetshire, Saturday, 12 October 1799.

                                                         Newgate Oct. 12.  1799

My Dearest Eliza

   I have reflected on my letter of Yesterday, and I regret that I sent it. It was indeed a faithful transcript of my agitated mind; but I know it has given you uneasiness, and the thought makes me additionally uneasy.  After I sent my letter, I re-perused yours several times, I called to mind the affectionate admonitions in some of your late notes, “to compose myself, to repose on my God &c, to look on the bright side” &c  I endeavoured to practise the excellent lessons you have repeatedly given me,—and not without success.  I hoped I had put too unfavourable an interpretation on the contents of your last.  I persuaded myself that your—that our friend Mr Haskins would not leave you with any alarming symptom about you, that the consultation with his medical friend was meerly respecting the most safe and expeditious means of thoroughly re-establishing your health. I strove to exert all the religious energy of mind of which I was capable—I trusted that Providence had not by such a variety of remarkable circumstances brought us together—that he had not (not meerly in our own opinion, but in that of our friends) so exactly paired our minds, meerly that our feelings might be the more painful: Above all I dwelt upon my favourite Idea—so fav­ourite that I will never part with it—That no event—not death itself can long separate us, and that all events of the present state, whether merciful or afflictive, will work together for good, and tend to render our friendship more sweet, more refined, more delightful to eternity!  

   I slept well last night, and am much more composed than Yesterday.  I recollect we have no Post from hence to morrow, and that if I do not write to day, you cannot hear from me till Tuesday.  The little conversation therefore which I am resolved to have with you to day, will I hope tend to remove that uneasiness which mine of yesterday, I fear gave you.  Trusting it may have that effect, I will be resigned and content if I cannot, till I again hear from you, be happy. 

   I shall be a little curious to hear how the matter has been finally settled with Feltham, altho’ it is now meerly a matter of curiosity.  You need not ask me if your letter detailing your Conversation with Mr Haskins, gave me pleasure.  You indeed answer the question yourself, and never did you answer one more truly— “I am sure it did.” The pecuniary part of the business, I was only anxious to have settled, as I before told you, in that way which would be most for your satisfaction and happiness.  Property I have for many [years] almost despised, and perhaps what some of my friends have hinted to me may be true, that I have been too careless of it.  It is the same with my person.  If our ministers had, when I appeared at the bar of the Lords, what the world would have called, totally ruined my circumstances—had they ordered me to Botany Bay, or even to the Scaffold, I think my fortitude, my Philosophy, and my religion would have well supported me thro’ either Trial, and as to the last mentioned—my weary spirit has often longed for a dismission, and to join kindred Spirits in another world.  Now however my little property, and my insignificant life, I consider of more importance, because you are interested in both.  It is indeed that consideration alone, which makes me attach importance to either, and which will make me what has been termed, and which I now think may be justly termed, more prudent in both respects, and for your sake, I will do everything in my power to promote, in the path of duty, my own safety, comfort & happiness.

                                                                                 4 oclock

   Since writing the above I have received your note of Yesterday, it was indeed very kind, my Dearest Friend, of you to give me a line.  Well—I will hope that as your Bristol Physician has confirmed the opinion of yr London Apothec­ary, in recommending  you to pursue yr Devonshire Journey, that you are not considered as a Patient who has any alarming symptoms about her.  I think if you had been judged to be in a situation any way dangerous, Bath or Bristol Air and Waters would have been recommended.  You see, I am now practising your advice, and that I am determined to put the most favourable construction on every thing, but do have the goodness to write me by return of Post, (if you write me nothing else) the particulars of your Conversation with the Physician, and whether he gave you good hope that your lungs were not at all affected, and that the only remains of your Disorder were weakness and fatigue.

   I cannot help repeating, that you would watch against everything that may fatigue you, there is some necessity for my repeating my injunctions, because you ascribe every return of illness to fatigue.  Miss Gurney in a very friendly letter I to day received from her, mentions that your natural flow of spirits, make you in a variety of ways exert yourself, and which is the cause of frequent weariness.

   I have had Young Dennys to spend an evening with me. I have something to tell you about the Dennys’s family—but must defer it. 

   I shall write you by Monday’s post.

   All my advice to you is contained in one short sentence—Take care of yourself.  May God bless the use of means for your complete recovery—or in other words that your health of Body may equal your health of Mind.  I feel myself much better to day than Yesterday, and I need not say how very happy your next letter will make me, should it contain an account such as I hope & expect.  God almighty bless you and be your preserver & Restorer is the constant & fervent prayer of your most sincere & affece

                                                         B Flower

Text: Flower Correspondence, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth; for an annotated edition of this letter and the complete correspondence of Eliza Gould and Benjamin Flower, see Timothy Whelan, ed., Politics, Religion, and Romance: The Letters of Benjamin Flower and Eliza Gould, 1794-1808 (Aberystywth: National Library of Wales, 2008), pp. 150-52. 

Nicholas Dennys, Jr., had been sent by his father to an academy in London (probably Newcombe’s) to “fit him for Trade.”  Young Dennys might still have been attending the academy at the time of Flower’s Newgate imprisonment, but more likely he had already entered into business. Both Benjamin Flower and Eliza Gould had previously worked for and lived with the Dennys family of Tiverton.